ESPN unveils Real +/-

This new advanced stat is supposed to adjust for both the quality of team mates and opponents when on the court.

Amir has been considered an undervalued asset, one of the best screen setters in the league and a great help defender. Not as much appreciated on these boards by some. Well Amir has the highest RPM on our team at +4.84 pts/100 possessions. This also places him 12th best in the entire league.

Would you mind explaining what the difference between this plus minus stat and the old one? I'm still a bit confused.

It's explained in the article. If you're on the court all the time with Lebron, he'll make you're normal old +/- look good even if you do squat. Guard Lebron an entire game you're numbers will probably be bad, even if you play well. I believe the numbers adjust so that you're playing with and against all average players - no one else pulling you're numbers up or pulling them down.

It's explained in the article. If you're on the court all the time with Lebron, he'll make you're normal old +/- look good even if you do squat. Guard Lebron an entire game you're numbers will probably be bad, even if you play well. I believe the numbers adjust so that you're playing with and against all average players - no one else pulling you're numbers up or pulling them down.

Ohhhh I missed that. That's great then. DD is better than I thought he would be. So if I go after a game on espn and look at the plus minus for each player this will be how they calculate it now?

I'm still kinda hesitant to just completely buy into this. I wanna see more details of how its calculated.

It passes the initial smell test in that the rankings don't look absurd (other than the odd unexpected name) but it isn't really clear from the article how it's calculated. Just reading the brief summary, it looks like there is a lot of "fuzzy math" involved, which should always raise an eyebrow or two....

It passes the initial smell test in that the rankings don't look absurd (other than the odd unexpected name) but it isn't really clear from the article how it's calculated. Just reading the brief summary, it looks like there is a lot of "fuzzy math" involved, which should always raise an eyebrow or two....

I hope the new age of basketball stats isn't made up of stuff that only people with proprietary software can really understand.

I hope the new age of basketball stats isn't made up of stuff that only people with proprietary software can really understand.

Thing is, teams have their own advanced stats we don't even see. And they are probably t least as advaced as this. Looking at these numbers, Casey's player usage makes more sense than traditional stats(other than Fields, why doesn't he play more??). I bet if you saw the Raps proprietary stats, the numbers would validate Casey playing certain players even more so.

One kid I thought was good was John Henson and I wondered why the Bucks weren't giving him more playing time. These stats somewhat answered that question; same with another recent topic of conversation, Ed Davis.

Traditional stats are going to stay, but if we really want to understand why coaches and FO's make some of the decisions they do, stats like these give a better picture, even if we don't 100% understand the methodology.

Read Thibs comments on Taj Gibson in the original article and try to think of any simple stat that would properly pick up his value.

Yay more made up stats so people can pretend to know stuff without watching the game.

you do know that the average 'stat nerd' almost certainly watches more basketball than a typical hardcore fan (and more than your traditional, sports-writer, 'truthiness' eye-test believer does), right? i mean, to get heavily involved in analytics speaks to an unwavering love of the game, to the degree that poring over the minutiae is exciting for them...it's not enough to 'just' watch, they want to know/understand the hows/whys of the game, and develop better means of understanding WHY/HOW something happened the way it did, because only until the 'why/how' is understood can that information actually be made useful.

what good does knowing what happened (i.e. what a traditional box score tells you), if you don't understand how or why (what 'advanced' metrics try to do)?

TRUE LOVE - Sometimes you know it the instant you see it across the bar.

It passes the initial smell test in that the rankings don't look absurd (other than the odd unexpected name) but it isn't really clear from the article how it's calculated. Just reading the brief summary, it looks like there is a lot of "fuzzy math" involved, which should always raise an eyebrow or two....

from a cursory review, it looks like it's simply trying to level the playing field, so to speak, and account for variances brought on by forces outside the individual's control. kind of reminds me of baseball stats that account for park effects, for instance, or FIP/xFIP (basically, evaluating a pitcher's performance by eliminating the vagaries of the defense playing behind him). +/- has generally been the weakest of the non-traditional stats, and is generally only quasi-reliable as a measure of a player's impact over a very large sample size (i.e. multiple seasons), because so much of it is based on who you're on the floor with.

TRUE LOVE - Sometimes you know it the instant you see it across the bar.